Police agencies are using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for mapping crime, identifying crime "hot spots," assigning officers, and profiling offenders, but little research has been done about the effectiveness of the ...

In the past half-century, fear of crime in the United States has fueled "white flight" from big cities, become known as a quality of life issue and prompted scholars and law enforcement experts to address ways of reducing ...

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court forced California to deal with the massive overcrowding in its prison system. The resulting reform shifted administrative and budgetary responsibility for low-level criminals from the state ...

Do you feel safe at home by yourself at night? Depends where you live. According to a new study by Professor Heather Rollwagen, apartment dwellers are three times more likely to feel safe inside their home if they are alone, ...

Non-biting blow fly Chrysomya megacephala is commonly found in dead bodies and is used in forensic investigations to determine the time of death, referred to as the post mortem interval. A report of synanthropic derived form ...

Philadelphia's SugarHouse Casino opened its doors in September 2010 after years of protests from community members who feared that the casino would lead to an increase in neighborhood crime. However, a new study by researchers ...

If Twitter had been invented during Prohibition, Al Capone's criminal career might have been much shorter. That's one conclusion that could be drawn from Matthew Gerber's use of Twitter data to improve crime forecasting in ...

When he worked in Africa, development economist Ariel BenYishay noticed small-scale entrepreneurs were often unable to grow their businesses beyond the initial stage, even when the opportunities were obvious.

Crime

Societies define crime as the breach of one or more rules or laws for which some governing authority via police power may ultimately prescribe a conviction. While every crime is a violation of the law, not every violation of the law is a crime, for example, breaches of contract and other civil law are offences or infraction.

When society deems informal relationships and sanctions, insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, there may result compulsory systems of social control imposed by a government, or by a sovereign state. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel populations to conform to codes, and can opt to punish or reform those who do not conform.

Authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate prohibited conduct, including rules codified into laws, policing people to ensure they comply with those laws, and other policies and practices designed to prevent crime. In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, and collectively these constitute a criminal justice system. While incarceration may be of temporary character and therefore aimed at reforming the convict, in some jurisdictions penal codes are written to inflict a permanent harsh punishment either in the form of capital punishment or life without parole.

The label of "crime" and the accompanying social stigma normally confine their scope to those activities seen as injurious to the general population or to the State, including some that cause serious loss or damage to individuals. The labellers intend to assert the hegemony of a dominant population, or to reflect a consensus of condemnation for the identified behavior and to justify a punishment inflicted by the State (in the event that standard processing tries and convicts an accused person of a crime). Usually, the perpetrator of the crime is a natural person, but crimes may also be committed by legal persons.